How are you called?

Celebrating our lay people is in the DNA of our diocesan vision here in Leeds with the first ever Lay Conference planned this June to be held at the Harrogate Convention Centre.

Lay ministry was a key topic at the tenth Diocesan Synod last October when the Lay Conference was announced – designed to affirm lay church member and boost their efforts to live out their faith in their parishes, schools and workplaces. And a motion, passed by Synod, encouraged a new emphasis on lay discipleship and ministry.

Christ the King, Battyeford, in the Huddersfield Episcopal Area, has spent the last two years investing in their faith and taking the vocation, spirituality, and experience of their lay people seriously, and this Lent sees a culmination of that project with a series of short films to tell those stories.

The vicar, the Revd Maggie McLean said: “Every Church has people living out their vocation; people who allow their faith to shape their choices and decisions and become the people God is calling them to be.

“This is no different at CtK. What we are trying to do during Lent is to bring this into the foreground so that others are encouraged and inspired to think about their own life of faith and discipleship,’ she added.

They are three contributions so far, Nigel, on music. Bill who worked with USPG and spent ten years in our link diocese of Tanzania, and Sheena, a member of church whose vocation is lived out working with children, but not as a teacher. Still to come is a parishioner who is a head teacher of a Church Primary School.

Said Maggie: “We often talk of vocation in terms of ordination or licensing to particular ‘church ministries’ but vocation is always going to be more than this and we want too celebrate and show this in our life together at CtK and beyond.”